World Cup

Leigh Herdman, Algosport: Differentiating the betbuilder product for the World Cup

A packed sporting schedule awaits operators in the second half of 2022, as the domestic football season is intercut with the FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

As more betting firms add betbuilders into their product arsenal, Leigh Herdman, CEO of Betting on Sports Europe sponsor Algosport, highlighted the increasing importance of differentiating this offering. 

SBC – What makes Betting on Sports Europe stand out as an event?

Leigh Herdman – BOSE always has an excellent lineup of speakers covering the topics at the forefront of our sector. The high attendance of decision-makers creates a great event for networking, forming new relationships and strengthening existing partnerships.

Betting on Sports is always a bit special for us. We first launched ourselves by taking a stand at the 2017 event. It’s great to be silver sponsors this year and continue our association with this well-established event in the gaming calendar.

SBC – What’s changed since your first Betting on Sports in 2017?

LH – Betbuilder has gone from an exciting new innovation to an essential component of a sportsbook offering. It’s enabled our success with integrations into multiple platforms and sportsbooks across the globe and we expect the next five years to be equally as exciting for us and the industry. 

As more sportsbooks add Betbuilder capabilities, it will become increasingly important to differentiate the product through creative user interfaces, bonusing, new bet types and customer personalisation.

SBC – How are you preparing for the upcoming World Cup?

LH – At the last World Cup, Betbuilder made the transition from being a manual request-a-bet product to a fully automated digital product. Operators with a Betbuilder reported that up to 25% of their gross tournament win came from this product alone. 

We’re hoping this year can be even more impressive. The expansion of player prop markets to assists, shots on target and more coupled with full in-play and cashout support will make the product an excellent fit for World Cup bettors.

SBC – What core challenges do you help solve for your customers/partners? 

LH – Many sportsbook platforms lack any algorithmic capability. Integrating Algosport’s Blackbox product gives them instant access to Betbuilders, cashout and derivative market pricing.

Customers use their own data to power our algorithms allowing them to offer Betbuilder on any event they have data for. That includes manually traded local events! The algorithms dynamically align themselves with the customer’s view and overround settings for an event to generate bespoke and consistent prices.

Our sublicensing commercial model with tiered rev share rates starting from only a few percent means that our B2B partners can offer our product to their B2C customers as part of their standard offering. 

SBC – Who have you especially enjoyed working with over the past year (partner/client)?

LH – A stand out partner of ours is Playtech, who are unafraid to innovate their core betting products. This is particularly important for us as we’re reliant on our partners pushing our products out for us. 

We find many customers are unwilling to be the first to market instead of waiting for someone like bet365 to go first. Then they wonder why they’re so far behind! The recent results reported by Playtech are testament to the rewards that can be achieved by employing a product team who are not overly risk-averse.

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